Lieutenant Jack Calloway was very familiar with pain.
He had known it in every form—sharp and immediate, like the searing bite of a bullet; explosive and deafening, like the shockwave of an IED hurling him into the dust; slow and agonizing, like the broken ribs he once had to set himself in the middle of a firefight.
He had seen pain on the faces of his brothers-in-arms as they bled out in the dirt, their hands gripping his like he could hold them to life. He had seen it in the eyes of his enemies—some defiant, some pleading, some already gone before they hit the ground.
Then there was the pain that didn’t come with blood or bruises. The kind that settled deep in the bones, never healing. The pain of watching his world unravel. The wreckage of his own life—promises broken, loved ones lost, a past he could never go back to.
Pain was something he understood, just like he understood everything else. Some pains were temporary. Some faded with time. Others, you could drink away or bury under the next mission, the next fight, the next kill.
And then there were the pains that stayed. The ones that haunted you every day, every night. The ones that whispered in the silence, that clung to you like a ghost, waiting in the shadows.
He had learned to live with all of them.
Because in war, pain wasn’t something you feared. It was something you carried.
The Roulette of Bullets
Bullets are a funny thing.
They never really know where they’re going to go.
It’s often said that the only thing that stops a bullet is a human body. That’s not really true. Sometimes a bullet rips right through flesh and muscle, a clean exit, leaving little more than a hole. Other times, it hits just wrong—clips a bone, ricochets inside, turning a single shot into a death sentence.
It’s all about the angle, the speed, the type of round, and just plain luck.
Luck.
That’s what it always comes down to. Whether you’re standing at the end of a barrel or behind the trigger, survival is just a game of inches.
The other thing that’s funny about bullets—even in the human body—is the smell.
That cauterizing stench.
It’s not like the movies, where bullets just punch holes clean through and people drop silently. No, when a round tears into flesh, the heat burns. The blood sizzles. There’s this sharp, metallic tang in the air, mixed with the iron scent of blood, sweat, and gunpowder.
You never forget that smell.
It lingers. Clings to your clothes, your skin, your memory. It’s the smell of war, of pain, of men who were standing a second ago and now aren’t.
Once you’ve smelled it, you know.
You know what death smells like.
The Fateful Day in Colombia
So I digress.
On that fateful day, our delegation was arriving at the Colombian Embassy—a massive structure in the middle of Bogotá, surrounded by high walls and a towering gate. From the outside, it was just concrete and steel, a fortress tucked into the city.
We pulled up in front of it, four vehicles in a tight formation. The streets were lined with buildings, perfect vantage points. Too perfect.
Then, it happened.
Gunfire. Heavy gunfire.
Windows shattered. Metal tore apart. Our van was getting ripped up before we even knew what was happening. Bullets screamed through the air, and in an instant, our four-vehicle convoy was down to one.
Somehow, we all ended up in a ditch—scrambling, bleeding, pinned down under relentless fire.
It was dark. Chaos. No one knew how bad it was. How many attackers? How many wounded? How many dead?
We were unprepared. Caught in the open. Most of us had taken a bullet. Some were luckier than others.
But in that moment, luck didn’t mean much.
No One to Trust
Colombia was a funny place back then.
It was a time when the FARC and the government were locked in a war that had no rules and no mercy. Every day, people were gunned down in shopping malls, blown apart on the streets, or simply disappeared without a trace. Death was routine, and fear was the currency everyone traded in.
You couldn’t drive from one town to the next without risking your life. A simple trip could end with you in the hands of guerrillas, tied to a tree, waiting for a ransom that might never come. Or worse, left in a ditch with a bullet in your skull.
And the worst part? You didn’t know who was more dangerous—the drug lords or the communists.
The cartels ruled with money and blood, carving out their empires in cocaine and corpses. The FARC fought under the banner of revolution, but in the end, they weren’t much different—both dealt in death, both thrived on fear.
I don’t really trust the police or the military either.
They work for both sides.
One day, they’re fighting the guerrillas, raiding jungle camps, burning coca fields, and hunting down rebels. The next, they’re taking a cut from the cartels, turning a blind eye at roadblocks, or worse—helping the same people they’re supposed to be fighting.
Loyalty wasn’t to the law. It was to whoever paid more.
In Colombia, everyone had their price. And if you didn’t have one, you were either already dead or just waiting your turn.
The Cowards Behind the Desk
War is pain.
Humans like to inflict pain.
They dress it up in flags, in speeches, in duty and honor. But at its core, war is about suffering—who can endure it, who can inflict it, and who can survive it.
And the ones who start wars? The ones who send men to die?
Most of them never feel a thing.
They sit behind desks, in air-conditioned offices, pushing buttons and signing orders. Their wars are fought on screens, their battles measured in numbers. They don’t bleed. They don’t hear the screams. They don’t smell the burnt flesh or feel the weight of a dying man in their arms.
Their hopes for greater glory are carried on the backs of others.
And when the war is over, they write the history. The medals go on their chests. The dead are buried, and the survivors—well, they just keep carrying the pain.
Full Circle
So we come full circle.
Pain is here to teach us. To remind us. To warn us. It carves its lessons into our flesh, etches them into our minds, hoping we’ll learn—hoping we won’t make the same mistakes again.
But we seldom listen.
Instead, we march forward, blind to the past, deaf to the warnings. The world spins, wars rage, men fight, men die. And those who survive? They collect their scars like medals, stacking them higher with each passing day.
Some medals are pinned to a uniform. Others are invisible.
But all of them are earned in blood.
Post Game
The Price of Survival
Jack Calloway lay flat in the ditch, his breathing steady despite the chaos around him. The gunfire had died down, but it hadn’t stopped. It never really stopped in places like this. The echoes of bullets still bounced off the embassy walls, fading into the distance, swallowed by the night.
They had been unprepared, caught in an ambush just feet from supposed safety. Four vehicles had rolled up to the embassy gate. Now, only one remained, riddled with holes, its occupants either dead, wounded, or cowering behind whatever cover they could find.
Jack turned his head slightly and saw him—Reese. His buddy. His teammate. The guy who was always first through the door, always had a joke before a mission, always seemed untouchable.
Not tonight.
Reese was lying on his back, staring up at the sky. His breathing was shallow, his chest rising and falling like a slowing tide. Jack had seen the wound—gut shot. Ugly. Deep. The kind that no medic could fix in the field.
Jack pressed hard on the wound, trying to stop the bleeding, knowing it wouldn’t be enough.
“Hang in there, man,” Jack muttered, though his voice was void of the usual lies soldiers told each other in moments like this. There was no you’re gonna be fine or help’s on the way. Just pain.
Reese coughed, a wet, gurgling sound. “Didn’t see that one coming…” he managed, his voice barely above a whisper.
The others had managed to crawl out of the line of fire. Some had bullet wounds, but they would live. Reese, though… he was slipping. Jack could feel it in the way his body grew heavier, how his grip on Jack’s wrist weakened.
He should have felt something—rage, sorrow, desperation. But all he felt was the weight.
Reese blinked slowly, his eyes unfocused. “Tell my kids, wife, sister… I—”
The words never came.
Jack didn’t need to hear them. He already knew.
He sat there for a moment, listening to the last breath leave his friend’s body. The distant gunfire seemed dull now, as if it were happening in another world.
War wasn’t about who lived or who died.
It was about who carried the pain.
Jack exhaled, grabbed Reese’s tags, and closed his friend’s eyes. Then, without another word, pushed down the ache in his chest, and prepared to keep moving.
Because in war, pain wasn’t something you feared.
It was something you carried.
But this was not the painful part.
The real pain came later.
It came when he stepped onto Canadian soil, when he knocked on the door of a house he had never been to before but knew too well.
It came when Reese’s sister opened the door and froze at the sight of him, they had somewhere to go.
It came when he met Reese’s kids.
They were too young to understand. A girl and a boy, standing close to their mother, staring up at the man in uniform who had come to take them to where no child should ever go. Jack had stood there, stiff, medals on his chest, dog tags in his palm, mouth dry.
What do you say?
What words could possibly explain why their father was never coming home?
There were no articles, no breaking news reports, no recognition beyond a quiet military funeral. Reese was Canadian. His death was buried under bureaucracy, sealed away in classified reports, forgotten by the media.
There would be no headlines. No national mourning. No honor beyond what his family and teammates carried in their hearts. He was buried like any other guy in a field of other people.
Jack Calloway had been in gunfights, had survived hellish firefights, had seen more death than any man should.
But standing in front of Reese’s family, seeing the pain in their eyes, hearing the quiet sniffles of a mother holding back tears, that was the hardest battle of all.
And it was one he could never win.
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